


(down this river) Every Turn

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of kitchen table friendships, and bourbon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(down this river) Every Turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoniaVice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/gifts).



Dot sings in the kitchen as she makes Miss Fisher a cup of tea. She breaks off as Mr. Butler comes in, but he smiles.

“Don’t stop on my account, Dot,” he says. “You have a lovely voice.”

She smiles, quick and just a little shy, and then continues on softer than before. Mr. Butler starts on breakfast—young Jane is home again, and he wants to make her her favorites. As he works, he lets his eyes close for a moment, listening to Dot—Mrs. Butler used to sing in the kitchen as they worked side-by-side, and Mr. Butler smiles a little in remembrance. She’d have liked Dot. Not that that’s any sort of exception—Dot is very easy to like.

Cec and Bert come in the back door, grumbling over some bet betwixt the two, and Dot hushes and cajoles them both into softer moods, until somewhere along the line they’re both sitting down at the table with tea in their hands and no real notion of how they ended up there. Mr. Butler watches them as he works—Bert especially is protective of Dottie, but they both tend to treat her as they would a younger sister: teasing, overprotective, and extremely bendable to her will. 

Mr. Butler wonders if the Constable has any real notion of what he’s gotten himself into, and whether he realizes just how badly everyone who cares for Dot will hurt him if he ever hurts her. Not that he thinks Collins will. Mr. Butler had discreetly watched their interactions when Collins had first started coming around, and he’s sure that Cec and Bert probably did the same. Just checking up on the couple. Making sure he was good enough for their girl.

Dot’s carefully wringing the whole tale out of the boys, though—a bit too much drink, a few badly placed wagers, and both insisting the other was at fault—far easier than he thinks they’d like to admit, and he’s pretty sure that Dot can hold her own. Just seeing the way she’s blossomed in this house, with Miss Fisher as her always…interesting role model, and Mr. Butler is sure she’ll do just fine.

“Mr. B,” Bert says, drawing him into the conversation, “what do you think? You can be the impartial judge who can tell Cec he’s wrong.” Bert grins toothily, and Mr. Butler smiles back in mild appreciation of Bert’s gambit.

“I don’t see why the two of you can’t just let it go,” Dot says coolly, taking a careful sip of her tea. Miss Fisher’s tea sits still steeping on the table, but Dot has a small crease in her forehead, and Mr. Butler would make a wager of his own that Dot will let it go cold and have to make her a new cup before abandoning the boys as they are.

“Honor, Dottie,” Cec says.

“Pride,” Bert agrees. 

Dot hides a small smile behind her cup, amused despite herself at their antics.

“Just so that’s cleared up, then,” Mr. Butler says. 

“When do you reckon Miss Fisher is going to find herself a new case, then?” Cec says, changing the subject at the look on Dot’s face.

“You sound awfully eager for someone to wind up murdered,” Dot hums, and Bert smirks.

“Doesn’t he, though,” he says, and Cec rolls his eyes at his friend.

“As if you didn’t ask the same thing last night.”

“What I say when I’m in my cups—er, sorry, Dot—”

“The Inspector called this morning,” Mr. Butler cuts in. “He asked that Miss Fisher come down to the station later this afternoon.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Dot asks, jumping to her feet. 

“If I told you, you’d have woken her up, and she needs her rest. She was—ah—occupied until late last night,” Mr. Butler says. Cec and Bert trade amused glances.

“She told me to always immediately tell her when—”

“Which is why I didn’t tell you, Dot,” Mr. Butler says. “Now, why don’t you go wake her up before her tea gets cold, and I’ll sort out Cec and Bert, all right?”

Dot looks at the tea with chagrin, and then nods, hurrying up the stairs. Mr. Butler knows that, whether she admits it or not, Dot enjoys Miss Fisher’s career just as much as Miss Fisher does. As much as they all do, point of fact, if the ill-hidden curiosity on Cec and Bert’s faces is anything to go by.

“What this time, do you reckon? Drowning?” Bert asks.

“Nah, that’s too tame for Miss Fisher,” Cec says. “Eaten by a lion, now that’s a case for her.”

Mr. Butler is loathe to interrupt their returned good moods, but knows them too well by now to think their bickering has run its course.

“What’s really going on?” he asks, leaning slightly against the counter. “Something you don’t want Dot to know, it seems like.”

Bert and Cec look somewhat abashed.

“It’s—ah—it’s nothing, Mr. B,” Bert says.

“We’ll sort it out without Dot’s help,” Cec says. He grins a little as he looks in the direction she’d disappeared to. “Not that she doesn’t come in handy when Bert’s being his usual pig-headed self.”

Bert growls a little, scowling at him, but Cec leans back in his chair, looking more than pleased with himself.

 

 

Mr. Butler escorts a man who is most assuredly a suspect to the door, his hand on the man’s—Jason—arm. When he returns, he pours a glass of bourbon for Miss Fisher and the Inspector, and then retreats to the kitchen, where Dot is waiting.

“He’s gone?” she asks, and Mr. Butler nods. “I don’t like the look of him.”

“Nor, I suspect, does Miss Fisher,” he says. “Don’t worry Dot, he’s gone, and I doubt he’ll want to come back again anytime soon. I might have given him a little warning before I shut the door behind him.”

Dot looks over her shoulder at him, her eyes twinkling slightly.

“Good,” she says. “That’s very good.”

“What’s good?” Bert asks, coming in. He wipes his boots off on the mat at Dot’s stern look, and Cec follows suit.

“Just getting rid of unwelcome visitors,” Mr. Butler says.

“Didn’t give you any trouble, did he?” Bert asks. There’s an undercurrent, just beneath his voice, that gets angry and a bit overprotective whenever he thinks about anyone under this roof getting hurt, even despite knowing that Miss Fisher and Mr. Butler can take of their own—and usually anyone else, too.

“Not at all,” Mr. Butler says, aware of that undercurrent, and trying to soothe it a little. “Miss Fisher and the Inspector are having some bourbon,” he says. “I think, given the current case, Miss Fisher would extend that offer to the two of you?”

Cec slumps into the chair across from Dot. Miss Fisher went down to the station a few days ago, and the case she’s gotten caught up in has been—well, hard. Any case with children is hard, and this is no exception. 

Bert follows suit, sliding into his chair even less gracefully than Cec. Mr. Butler pours the bourbon, and even Dot takes a small sip.

“Just to warm up,” she says, as if they can’t see the small pinch of worry in her brow.

They sit and talk for a while after that, and Mr. Butler finally sits down next to Dot, comforting himself in both the warmth of the kitchen, and the people around him.

 

 

Cec and Bert are making tea when Mr. Butler arrives in the kitchen. Dot is sitting at the table watching them, and vainly trying to keep a smile off her face as they make rather a mess of things.

“Mr. B!” Cec exclaims as Mr. Butler leans in the doorway. “Tea?”

“Are you two trying to destroy the kitchen?” Mr. Butler asks, smiling to soften his words. “Do you have some sort of vendetta against this room?”

“Miss Fisher’s still at the station, but she asked us to bring Dot home,” Bert says.

“And we thought she could do with a cup of tea,” Cec says.

“But they insisted I sit, and that they make it,” Dot says, sharing a private, amused smile with Mr. Butler. He looks closer, and can see what has Bert and Cec worried—she does look strained. The case may be closed, but it looks like it might haunt them all for a while.

“The tea is a nice thought,” Mr. Butler says, “but I think maybe something a bit strong, Dorothy?” She nods after a moment, and Mr. Butler pours her a few fingers of bourbon. Her eyes widen a little as she sees how much there is, but he winks at her. “Just to take the edge off.”

Cec and Bert have both turned around, and watch with expressions both worried and amused as Dot takes a deep breath, and then takes a full swallow of the bourbon.

She sits for a moment, and then nods her head, as if she’s decided something.

“Right,” she says. “About that bet.”

It takes them a second to remember, and then Cec and Bert both look as innocent as they possibly can. Not—admittedly—as innocent as they’re trying to be.

“What bet?” Bert asks.

“No bets here,” Cec says, in what is frankly an overplay of his hand. Dot narrows her eyes.

“Ah, that bet,” Bert says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cec says.

Mr. Butler watches the proceedings with an amused smile. “All sorted, then?” he asks. Cec looks quite pleased with himself; Bert looks considerably less happy.

“All sorted,” Cec says.

“There you have it, Dot,” Mr. Butler says. “All sorted.”

She looks suspiciously at all three of them, but after a moment shrugs and takes another full swallow of her bourbon.

“Go on, then,” she says. “Tell me what you did. I could do with a good distracting.”

Cec and Bert look at each other for a moment, two, three, and then Cec nods abruptly, abandoning the half-made tea as he sits down at the table.

Bert pokes dismally at the mess, and Mr. Butler sweeps in and prods him towards the table.

The story they tell is almost certainly nowhere near the truth, but Mr. Butler listens, interjecting a few comments of his own during the telling. Truth or not, the important thing is that Dot is relaxing slowly in her seat between the bourbon and the story and even the tea that Mr. Butler eventually brings her.

 

 

The next morning, when Mr. Butler comes into the kitchen, he hears Dot singing again, for the first time in days. 

He starts breakfast, and when he smiles at her, she smiles back, never missing a note.


End file.
